Govt defying public on superannuation

“Dr
Cullen has confirmed today he is proposing a huge change to
superannuation without a skerrick of public or political
debate – at a time when New Zealanders want political
agreement,” Opposition Finance spokesperson Bill English
said today.

“New Zealanders want long-term security for
their retirement and that can only be built on broad
political agreement. However, the Government has scrapped
the Super 2000 Taskforce and is now well advanced in
implementing its own scheme.

“In the BPS Dr Cullen is
allocating billions of dollars over the next four years to a
Government investment fund – that is taking the issue a long
way ahead of any public or political consensus.

“From what
we know so far, it looks like a case of robbing Peter to pay
Paul. Running higher debt to GDP is no way to secure a
sustainable super scheme.

“It also looks like a form of
compulsory savings – and New Zealand voters have well and
truly rejected that.

”Otherwise the BPS is just as we
thought – the Government is riding a wave of growth and jobs
created by National, but trouble is around the
corner.

“The figures confirm what we have known for a long
time – the Government has inherited a strong economy and for
a year or two anyway, they can’t help but reap the benefits
of that. It would take a fool or a vandal to mess up the
economic fundamentals the Government has inherited, but just
watch them.

“This Government will keep making changes like
this to ACC which don’t make sense to anyone. In the
pipeline we can already see the changes to the Employment
Contracts Act, and the sure signs of slack management of
billions of dollars in SOEs. In time these left-wing
measures will choke the enterprise and innovation that
creates new jobs and growth in the economy.”

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